Weekly Challenge: Traditional Landscape

This week, the challenge from Dogwood Photography is "Landscape: Traditional--Shoot a beautiful landscape and share it with the world. Find a nice foreground and don't forget the sky."

The problem with shooting landscapes on a schedule is weather, of course. It wasn't until yesterday that my free time coincided with some pretty weather. I know, I know: you can shoot in all weather, or at least all the weather you can tolerate. But when both foreground and sky are part of the assignment, you need a certain amount of visibility.

Some incidental lessons from this assignment: Check your battery charge or (better) carry a charged spare. I always do, and sure enough one of them began to conk out while I was shooting. Wear boots. It's always muddy where you want to set up. I took my new infrared remote for the Nikon and used it for some tripod shots before the sun came up, together with the remote mirror-up mode on the D750 (press once, the mirror goes up; press again and the shutter trips. Nice.) At $20 the ML-L3 may be the cheapest Nikon gear I ever buy. Speaking of cheap, my wife kindly lent me a shower cap for a camera cover in case of rain. They're cheap or free and work pretty well.

A more important lesson, I think, is that I'm rushing when I'm out shooting. I had no time constraints, yet I hurried through some scenes. It's a bad habit. When I get back and start processing images it's a sure bet I'll wish I could do some over again: stuff in the frame that shouldn't be there, bad angles, poor composition, wrong exposure. I need to slow down.

Here's my landscape. It's on the Maryland shore of the Potomac River, where
Seneca Creek enters. The bridge once carried the C&O Canal over the creek. Does the bridge count as foreground? Hope so.

Seneca Creek at Potomac River